"This was a difficult decision to make, but one that was necessary at this time," general manager John Paxson said in a statement Monday. "Scott helped us in many ways during his time with the Bulls; most importantly, he helped this franchise get back to respectability. I am appreciative of his hard work and the imprint that he left on our team."

The Bulls said no decision has been made on a replacement for Skiles.

Ben Wallace said Saturday he would welcome personnel changes if it would help the club.

"That's one of those things that goes along with this league," said Wallace. "Change is not always bad. If everybody wants to be here we have to step it up and go out there and play basketball."

I just hope we win the title this year mostly because it would make Pistons fans very happy, but also because I got a feeling that we are stuck with Flipper at least until his current contract runs out regardless of whether we win a title with him as coach or not.

Would KG had left (been traded) MN earlier if Flipper had left earlier? He was out pretty quickly after Flipper left and we all know that KG thinks a lot of Flipper. It is going to be quite a while before the T-Wolves get back to the playoffs.

Little surprising since this year is starting off the same as the others. For whatever reason most Bulls fans feel differently about this 9-16 start and Paxson must be under a lot more heat. Firing the coach is a popular 1st line of defense for a GM.

Pistons meanwhile are off to the leagues 2nd best record so far. The leagues not just the East.

Little surprising since this year is starting off the same as the others. For whatever reason most Bulls fans feel differently about this 9-16 start and Paxson must be under a lot more heat. Firing the coach is a popular 1st line of defense for a GM.

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Actually they recovered far better last year from their slow start than they did this year. Their low point last season was losing the first 6 games of their circus road trip to fall to 3-9, but they immediately won 12 of their next 13 and never fell below 3 games over .500 the rest of the way, eventually finishing 49-33. Their record after 25 games was 15-10. But now that they're 7 below .500 after 25 games, it's pretty clear that they've taken a step back.

Except against us Big Ben's performance this year for the most part has been off quite a bit. Of course he has been injured, but he hasn't missed that many games.

I was just thinking.

Big Ben has got an awfully large contract, which it appears at this point the Bulls are probably stuck with. There is no way, in my opinion, given Ben's huge salary that they could trade him, unless they agreed to eat a big chunk of his salary but would that do them any good?

One of the salary cap experts on this forum could probably explain if the Bulls traded Big Ben but ate some of his contract how that would affect their cap.

In any case, he will not be too easy to trade because his performance has been way off this year against everyone but us.

Right now the Bulls are really hurting financially because of the deal that they gave Big Ben. So maybe Paxon thought it would be better and cheaper to get rid of Skiles, depending on how much of his contract that they have to eat and hope that Big Ben's performance improves enough to warrant most if not all of his salary.

My guess is that Big Ben's performance is going to improve starting now.

Did I just say that he has been dogging it in order to force Paxon's hand to fire Skiles?

Ben has obviously been struggling a lot in recent weeks, but I think he has way too much professional pride to dog it for any conceivable reason, no matter how bad his relationship might be with whomever the coach is.

Ben has obviously been struggling a lot in recent weeks, but I think he has way too much professional pride to dog it for any conceivable reason, no matter how bad his relationship might be with whomever the coach is.

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You are most likely correct.

Most likely he was not dogging it, but the bad relationship with Skiles along with the poor performance of the Bulls this year along with Big Ben's injuries could have negatively affected his mental approach to the games and therefore his performance.

Also, we continue to win, and he could be bummed out about taking the Bulls deal and not staying with us for less money, even though he publicly denies it.

Yeah, I personally think it is bull. Chicago is has been a slow starting team and Skiles has them peeking in the playoffs. The only thing different this year is that the management messed up the psyche of the team the first 10 games by allowing all those Kobe rumors to fly. The guys were bombarded by trade rumors. Plus you add a few new good players to the mix, it takes a little time to get in a groove. Chicago was starting to get it turned around. They were 500 over the last 10 games. They had the worst part of the season and were only two games out of the last playoff spot. I'd trade Flipper for Skiles right now. They can throw Ben in the trade too.

Actually some commentary has said that the Gasol-to-Chicago rumors last year were basically stronger than the Kobe rumors this season--obviously not as much on the national media radar, but more realistic because the chances of the Bulls actually trading Kobe were never very good. The failure to reach contract extensions with Deng and Gordon might have more to do with their production dropping than the Kobe rumors. Though I'm not sure what the deal is with Hinrich, who's been particularly bad.

Bulls fans at the blog I've been checking a bit (blogabull.com) seem to have a similar complaint vis-a-vis Skiles not playing their young big men that we have with Flip Sr. and Amir, only it's more pronounced with the Bulls fans because it's about more than one young player for them. And in general, there seems to be a lot of anger with how he managed their rotations, but even worse than our criticisms of Flip Sr. because (unlike our situation here) Skiles kept messing around with their starting lineups.

Yeah, I personally think it is bull. Chicago is has been a slow starting team and Skiles has them peeking in the playoffs. The only thing different this year is that the management messed up the psyche of the team the first 10 games by allowing all those Kobe rumors to fly. The guys were bombarded by trade rumors. Plus you add a few new good players to the mix, it takes a little time to get in a groove. Chicago was starting to get it turned around. They were 500 over the last 10 games. They had the worst part of the season and were only two games out of the last playoff spot. I'd trade Flipper for Skiles right now. They can throw Ben in the trade too.

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Why did they fire Skiles if the team started the same as last year and yet they still almost made it to the ECF last season.

Skiles didn't control personnel changes.

The trade rumors?

Paxon is going to fire Skiles because of trade rumors that he helped create a lot more than Skiles.

Actually some commentary has said that the Gasol-to-Chicago rumors last year were basically stronger than the Kobe rumors this season--obviously not as much on the national media radar, but more realistic because the chances of the Bulls actually trading Kobe were never very good. The failure to reach contract extensions with Deng and Gordon might have more to do with their production dropping than the Kobe rumors. Though I'm not sure what the deal is with Hinrich, who's been particularly bad.

Bulls fans at the blog I've been checking a bit (blogabull.com) seem to have a similar complaint vis-a-vis Skiles not playing their young big men that we have with Flip Sr. and Amir, only it's more pronounced with the Bulls fans because it's about more than one young player for them. And in general, there seems to be a lot of anger with how he managed their rotations, but even worse than our criticisms of Flip Sr. because (unlike our situation here) Skiles kept messing around with their starting lineups.

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Check out Arena's latest blog. It gives a pretty good account of the Deng/Gordon thing. Gordon actually sat down to talk to Arena's about it, maybe knowing he would put it out there.

Actually some commentary has said that the Gasol-to-Chicago rumors last year were basically stronger than the Kobe rumors this season--obviously not as much on the national media radar, but more realistic because the chances of the Bulls actually trading Kobe were never very good. The failure to reach contract extensions with Deng and Gordon might have more to do with their production dropping than the Kobe rumors. Though I'm not sure what the deal is with Hinrich, who's been particularly bad.

Bulls fans at the blog I've been checking a bit (blogabull.com) seem to have a similar complaint vis-a-vis Skiles not playing their young big men that we have with Flip Sr. and Amir, only it's more pronounced with the Bulls fans because it's about more than one young player for them. And in general, there seems to be a lot of anger with how he managed their rotations, but even worse than our criticisms of Flip Sr. because (unlike our situation here) Skiles kept messing around with their starting lineups.

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Skiles came on board in 2003-04.

The players that they say he failed to develop are probably from the group that were traded like Chandler, Crawford, Curry etc.

But Hinrich's first year was also 2003-04, Gordon's, Duhon's, Nocioni's and Deng's first year were all 2004-05, Those five guys all developed under Skiles were the Bulls five leading scores last year and got them within 2 wins of the ECF. So I really don't understand how people can say that he didn't develop young guys.

Chandler had been with the Bulls for two years before Skiles arrived so what did Cartwright a former center and Chandlers initial coach with the Bulls do during those two years to develop Chandler? No way you can lay that on Skiles, though he did have Chandler for three years before they sent him to NOK. The fact is also that during Chandler's last two years in Chicago he averaged about 14 rebounds per 40 minutes so it wasn't like he was doing a Darko.

As far as Curry and Crawford go. Look what they are doing now with the Knicks. Did Skiles ruin their careers? I doubt it, because he certainly doesn't have appeared to have ruined the careers of Chandler, Gordon Hinrich, Deng, Duhon and Nocioni.

As far as using a lot of different lineups. They had injuries and were playing poorly so he was trying to improve their performance.

Check out Arena's latest blog. It gives a pretty good account of the Deng/Gordon thing. Gordon actually sat down to talk to Arena's about it, maybe knowing he would put it out there.

They fire Skiles around Christmas. That's cold.

As long as the Bulls fon't hire LB, i'm good.

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Doesn't that have to do with the contract extensions offered by Paxon that they turned down.

"It ain't about just Iggy, Deng and Emeka, it's about everyone. It's about all young players out there who are going into negotiating and who are be going to do it in the future. If somebody offers you $12 million and you think you're worth more than that, somebody should punch you in your face if you turn down that money. What if you get hurt and you can't play basketball again? You just lost $60 million. You just threw away a great lottery ticket. That's what people don't understand." I can't say that I totally disagree with Arenas on this one, but this type of criticism is very unusual from one player to another. I've heard players complain about other players' deals, but never in a public forum. While in Chicago, I spoke with Gordon and Deng about Arenas's post. Both players turned down extensions in the neighborhood of five years, $50 million and it has been blamed for some of the Bulls struggles this season. Needless to say, Gordon was a tad bit upset with Arenas.

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This sounds like a Paxon thing, not Skiles.

I Talked to Ben Gordon For all the Chicago fans out there who heard about Ben Gordon wanting to talk to me, we sat down and talked for like 30 minutes. He wanted to pick my brain a little bit and we did some chit-chatting. You know, I didn’t actually say his name in my blog, but he still wanted to talk to me about that part of the market.

He was telling me the real story, the part that people wasn’t getting. He was like, “G.A., I respect your game, and we did a shoot together in the past so I know you’re cool, but it was hard to read what you were really saying, that’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

He was telling me, “They didn’t even negotiate with me. They were like, ‘This is what it is, take it or leave it’ and that was it.”

It works both ways. I was just giving him some of the knowledge I know. And the same thing with Deng. I ended up finding out that with Deng; they didn’t even offer him $60 million. No, they didn’t even come close to that money.

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If you do a search for "Skiles" on the Arenas blog you come up empty.

So according to the Captain Quirk blog the problem with Deng/Gordon and the Bulls had to do with Paxon and not Skiles.

Obviously Paxton believed the ESPN and SI hype about the Bulls winning the east and with the horrific start he was forced to make a move...Send in Ron Jeremy's brother or even the Zar to take over. LB like Hubie and Daddy Rich, may be a tad to old to coach in todays environment....

Obviously Paxton believed the ESPN and SI hype about the Bulls winning the east and with the horrific start he was forced to make a move...Send in Ron Jeremy's brother or even the Zar to take over. LB like Hubie and Daddy Rich, may be a tad to old to coach in todays environment....

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Did Paxon fire Skiles because he knows that Zeke is getting the ax in N.Y.? and is planning on bringing Zeke back home?

I don't know how the Bulls fans would take to having a Bad Boy as a coach, even one from Chicago.